Friday, 15 January 2010

Juroku no kata

This has been a hard kata to research! There has been little information recorded about it but this is what I have been able to find out:

The word Juroku literally means '16' or '16 hands' and refers to the 16 different steps in the kata. There is no other meaning to this kata. It is a relatively modern kata developed by Kenwa Mabuni (1889 - 1952) with some help from his good friend Myiagi Sensei (1888-1953) founder of Goju Ryu karate. Mabuni Sensei is the founder of Shito-ryu karate which is the parent of Shukokai karate.

The kata has some elements from the ancient kata Wankan (Matsumora version) also known as MatsukazeIt also includes an interesting technique using a double blow with the palms of the hand which is possibly extracted from the kata Jitte.

In our system of shukokai karate (SSK) the juroku kata appears on the 3rd kyu syllabus.

10 comments:

Wow - nice kata. It is very linear, like many of the early Goju-ryu katas. Lots of stuff hidden in those 16 steps, for sure!

I love katas like this! Learning the bunkai must be like unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning :-). In both Goju-ryu and USA Goju, we have a few katas that have numbers for names. But I must mis-count or something because I tend to end up with more steps than the kata is named for, LOL...

It was my favourite kata at the time of learning it (every kata I learn tends to become my favourite for a while - except pinan sandan and pinan godan which I never really took too!).

The part of juroku that I have trouble with is the crane stance near the end - I'm just no good at standing on one leg (I blame it on my narrow feet LOL). I tend to look like the leaning tower of pisa as I start falling to one side whilst trying to drastically get the arm movements in - much to the amusement of my instructor no doubt!

Hi I am Nikhil, from India. I am currently brown belt (3rd kyu) in Shukokai style and we have Kata Juroku in our 2nd kyu test..The video at your site has been removed .It will be really helpful to all Karatekas like me if you can post another quality video of this Kata at your site..

Hi Nikhil, I didn't realise that the video had been removed so thanks for letting me know. I have replaced it with two different videos. It's nice to hear from a fellow shukokai practitioner. Thanks for dropping by.

Our techniques and katas are mainly influenced by Sensei Kimura so we do some things slightly differently but it's great to see what other shukokai clubs are up to!

If you are interested there is a book by Thos. M. Morris on Shukokai kata which is quite old now (1979) but still very interesting for comparison. It also has some basic bunkai interpretations too which is nice.

Hi John, thanks for dropping by, it's always nice to hear from other Shukokai practitioners. I checked out that book on Amazon and it costs £123.00 and that's for a used copy! It gets great reviews though.

Regarding the meaning of the kata, Soke Mabuni Kenei told us the meaning of '16' is not the number of techniques, steps or so but refers to the 16th year that the emperor (Hirohito) was in power. The kata was developed in 1941 as a salute to emperor Hirohito.